how to build muscle

As I wrapped up my amazing 4th of July weekend last night, I tried to scramble to figure out what workout I wanted to do the following morning. As I sat in front of the TV watching ESPN FC (yes, I’m a soccer hooligan), I wanted to do something different than the “Big Lift, Big Results” I got from one of my go-to websites, Primer Magazine.

I knew I had drank and ate like I wanted to be the poster child for America by eating whatever I thought sounded good and drinking craft beer at every stop. To be fair, I was in Milwaukee, WI – also known as Brew City – and they have an awesome craft beer culture. Even so much so that we may or may not have brought home a case of Spotted Cow beer. That’s not a very Midwestern-sounding name at all…

So back to my coming to terms with the decisions I made during the holiday known as America’s birthday. I knew that I probably needed more cardio than heavy lifting. I needed to really jump-start my metabolism and get my body going again so the first thing that came to mind was a kick-boxing workout. I Googled some routines, but didn’t really find much that interested me.

FUN FACT: according to YouTube, females apparently LOVE kick boxing so be careful, fellas. She might toss you around…

Well anyways, I finally picked a kickboxing workout, but it was very reluctantly that I picked it. I think I was just getting too tired to care so I chose the one I was looking at. Settling is never a good idea ESPECIALLY when it’s a workout.

When I woke up bright and early at 4:40 AM this morning, the first thing I thought was, “Well I really don’t have a workout ready, but there is a spin class at the gym.”

Note: I don’t own a bike so I don’t ride a lot. By no means am I a cyclist in any sense of the term, but I can fake it well as I stand next to my brother and dad who can bike like champs. I mean, they’ve done RAGBRAI.

So back to this spin class thing. I’ve been working out at an L.A. Fitness gym for about seven months now. In the winter months, this spin class was packed. They even had a sign-up sheet when you walked in so I never bothered because I hate fighting other people to get my workout in. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday like clockwork, lots of people would take this class, but I noticed that it was mainly women. Now some of you might think that would be perfect for a guy, but thankfully I’m happily in a relationship and I don’t think she’d be too happy with that and I couldn’t blame her!

One of the guys I have gotten to know at the gym picked up a an injury (shoulder or back – I can’t remember) so he needed to find an alternative to his normal lifting routine. He took the spin class a couple of times and asked me if I was interested. I made up some generic excuse (“I’m in the middle of a workout plan, so when I’m done I definitely will!”).

Well today, I didn’t have an excuse and even worse, I didn’t have a workout planned. I feel like I’m in pretty good shape these days, but I had no idea what kind of beast this spin class was going to be. Instead of me telling you about all of the “hills” we climbed, I want to show you my heart rate during the workout, calories burned and my rating of the workout.

So guys you can see that my spin class was an intense workout. I only had a casual 5-minute warm-up bike ride, the 45-minute spin class and light stretching to finish. I couldn’t have imagined the spin class being a more perfect workout for my post-4th of July weekend to start of the week right. Also, I like keeping my body guessing so this was a nice change of pace. Nice, but not easy.